


The Daffodil's Echo

by Ollie_Mor



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Character Death, Pretentious, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 23:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ollie_Mor/pseuds/Ollie_Mor
Summary: The daytime was too hot, but the nighttime was too cold. Prey was too scarce some days and other days, too plentiful. The river was too long, but not long enough to take him any place he didn’t know. Suitors were too persistent, yet they seemed to lack any sincerity.Narcissus didn’t like these contradictions.





	The Daffodil's Echo

The daytime was too hot, but the nighttime was too cold. Prey was too scarce some days and other days, too plentiful. The river was too long, but not long enough to take him any place he didn’t know. Suitors were too persistent, yet they seemed to lack any sincerity.

Narcissus didn’t like these contradictions. He didn’t like that he’d never find love, even with the obsessive creatures who lust after him.

He distantly remembered another like him: It was Psyche, who was so beautiful that Eros himself fell for her. Or perhaps, he could cite Atalanta, the fierce woman who killed all her suitors until finally settling for a kind boy blessed by Aphrodite.

Those instances felt like distant myths, although you could still find the shrines made to the former and the felled suitors of the latter. Would true love bless him once Aphrodite grew sick of his tired rejections of men and women decades older than him? Would he instead die, his blood dying the river after driving his admirers mad enough with lust?

Another man came to his river one day. He came and didn’t even bother asking to exchange names, no, he instead insisted on bedding Narcissus. He declared that his love was _pure,_ that he deserved the boy for this reason alone. His requests bordered on demanding and the hunter in question listened with a tight grip on his bow.

“Leave me, you _wretch,”_ Narcissus snarled, “If you’ll die without my touch, _so be it_.”

He didn’t register the other man’s response, instead choosing to leave the suitor to his wallowing. He didn’t feel remorse. He was instead filled with rage. How dare that man approach him with such insolence? The boy was not the shoddy conquest of some rotter. He wouldn’t kneel to their love and take it like a whore.

He felt disgusted with himself. Whenever they would touch him and beg him, _just this once_ , he wanted to end it all. He didn’t do it, though. He didn’t deserve this love. He didn’t deserve to be tossed around like a fresh bloom to be defiled. He wanted love, something real, he wanted-

What he desired more than love was to be left alone. He could live forever, untouched and undesired, knowing nothing but the iciness of the water and the gentle heat of Helios filtered through thick tree branches and be content.

Nonetheless, he would never be able to revel in that sense of peace and fulfillment. The gods were too cruel.

The hunter refused even a glance at his reflection in the water. All he would see upon looking would be a miserable wretch tortured by a life lived unfulfilled. He hated his body and all the trouble it brought him.

He distantly pondered the fate of Medusa, a woman cursed with looks so petrifying that any mortal who looked upon her turned to stone. That same woman lived in exile, cursed by the gods. However, Narcissus often wondered: what if their fates had been switched? Somehow, he found it easy to wish it had been him who slept with Poseidon in the temple of Athena, though the notion insulted his pride. The only way to ward off the herds of dribbling suitors would be to sleep with one. Not to claim the gods would be after his body as humans were, though, they surely hated him if they chose to condemn him to this.

So, there he sat, silently basking under the sun and pitying himself when a small voice called to him.

_"Not... hate..."_

He shot up, casting a glare to the world around him. "Who is there?" His eyes settle on a suspicious-looking bush simply because he didn't want to look foolish by glancing around.

_"Who is there?"_

"If you can quote me, you can speak and say your name."

To his shock, the owner of the voice raised her head from that very bush.

She was fair and lithe, innocence painting her face and settling in her eyes. To put it simply, she was a nymph. They all looked virtually the same to the pessimistic hunter.

_"... can quote... say your name."_

He glared at the nymph. "Narcissus is my name. What is yours, or are you simply going to echo me?"

_"... my name... Echo..."_

He scowled. "Why have you come here, Echo?"

She stared at him, fright in her eyes like he was a snake about to strike.

Her meek behaviour did nothing to soften his glare. "Well? I don't suppose it to be for the same reason all others come here? To beg for courtship or a place in my bed when you've just learned my name?"

_"... for courtship..."_

His face, as flawless as it may have been, became riddled with stress as he glowers down at the nymph. "I won't have it. You have no stake in claiming you love me."

The nymph’s eyes lit up like the sun. _"Love me!"_

As if suddenly drunk out of her inhibitions, the nymph flung herself upon him, wrapping her arms tight around his neck. Her small lips smashed against his own.

The momentum nearly threw him across the rocks strewn about the stream. The image of his skull cracked open and leaking into the water frightened him into throwing the young nymph off of himself.

She let out a cry parallel to his own, though he hadn't realized he'd cried out, and vanished.

Narcissus collapsed beside the stream, gazing at the air that once was Echo as if she'd reappear. The very rocks he'd feared would be his end knead into his skin, no doubt leaving bruises darker than night.

She had just... dissolved, like salt into the sea.

Before the sight could fully register in his brain, a flash of light blinded him. He threw an arm over his face to shield his eyes only to find a force pulling it back down, revealing a winged woman holding a whip.

He reeled back.

"That was cruel, _boy."_

Terror took over his mind and then his whole body.

No, no, no, he hadn't done anything wrong. What had that girl been thinking, throwing herself upon him like that? Too many times before, he found himself struggling under a drooling beast who'd grope wildly at his lithe body until he finally reached one of his fallen arrows or a nearby stone. Narcissus had reason to push her off of himself. Didn't she know not to startle a hunter of all people? She was lucky he hadn't shot her with one of his arrows.

These thoughts ran through his head, a mile a minute. Desperately, he asserted that this woman before him was in no way Nemesis and that he hadn't done anything wrong.

Nevertheless, a small whisper in his head told him he was wrong. That girl had been a nymph, and nymphs were the bane of any rational thoughts, being eternally youthful and innocent. Echo hadn't known better because she couldn't have. That reality scared Narcissus.

"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"

The words failed to leave his mouth.

_I had never meant to; she'd jumped on me, what was I to do? What was she thinking anyway? Did that nymph sincerely believe I'd love her?_

Fury lit the goddess' eyes. " _Why you-_ "

The hunter scrambled back but was caught by the ankle by the goddess' whip. With no more than a light tug, she dragged him through the dirt and sharp rocks that border the stream.

One of her hands found his head and entangled itself in his hair, yanking him up. " _Insolent boy_. It seems my sister chose to bless yet another _hellion_ with no recognition of his influence upon the world and people around him."

The goddess was speaking of her sister now, Tyche, who dealt out good fortune.

He trembled with a quaking fear that nearly completely overshadowed the reprehensible thought brought by the goddess' accusation. Somehow, despite his panic, rage boiled in his veins. The resentment that kindled his prejudice shattered against his skull and unleashed the most blasphemous of his thoughts.

Before he could bite his tongue, Narcissus exploded in a paroxysm of petulance: "What could I have possibly done to deserve this _curse?!"_

The contempt painted across Nemesis' face darkened and her grip on his head tightened. The hunter cried out in pain as the goddess made her move, jerking him towards the river by his hair. In spite of the river's previous calmness, its current accelerated and started to rip gravel and weeds from the soil in its wake.

To his horror, he could not even achieve a broken plea to the vengeful goddess. All he did was whimper and whine because her hold on him was too tight, and the sight of the rocks he'd previously pictured embedded into his skull frightened him to no end.

He had never meant to hurt the nymph. The boy had forgotten his place, but assuredly, that didn't call for his execution. Unquestionably, he could be forgiven.

Nemesis objected. She thrust his head down, facing the stream that all-too-quickly slowed. The water's surface morphed into a mirror, and distantly the hunter remembered the pained truth his mother had always told him in tears and sobs.

_"If you catch more than a glimpse of your reflection, you'll waste away."_

He forced his eyes shut and attempted to wrench himself from the goddesses’ grasp. His mind insisted that he didn’t deserve this fate. In truth, there was nothing that he did wrong. The suitors, stalkers, and aggressors that sought nothing from him save his body and dignity were the real villains. It didn't matter if they died by his hand or their own, for that was justice. He was innocent. He was-

Nevertheless, Nemesis submerged the hunter's head into the ice-cold river, holding him under the surface just long enough for the current to come in once again and rip the air from his lungs. However, when he surfaced again, the river was perfectly calm once more. An unknown force opened his eyes with fervour as if having complete authority over his body.

What greeted Narcissus when his vision returned to him was a young man with disdain radiating from his pale eyes. Drops fell from the hunter's dark locks that rippled and distorted the image. Soon, the young man's face was replaced with much more familiar faces, those of the many men and women who sought him in the forest and either left empty-handed and heartbroken or put an end to their miserable lives within walking distance of the fated river. Not one of those desirous faces with their _lustful_ eyes and _slobbering_ mouths brought any pity to the hunter's mind. They made his life a mortal punishment fitting that of a prisoner of Tartarus.

The last illusion displayed the life of a nymph who was chased for her beauty by gods. Despite this, she always rejected their advances. She was loyal and kind, serving Zeus by distracting his wife from his indiscretions with stories of grandeur. When Hera caught on, she cursed the nymph to only repeat the words of others.

One day, she came across a voice as engrossing as a siren's song. Following the sweet voice, she found that the words it spoke weren't nearly as pretty. The words were callous and bitter, although, that didn't prevent the chills the voice sent up her delicate spine. The voice spoke cruelly of itself and others; it did nothing but put down the very concept of what the nymph felt so deeply: _love._ She loved that voice, its cruel tone, and the man that owned it.

The nymph finally decided to confess her feelings on a day when the sun hung high in the sky, and the rays passed through the tree branches just right, silhouetting the man's flawless body. She found him battling with his own thoughts and felt her heart ping. She wanted to take that pain away.

Unfortunately, she was caught in her own haste and was rejected swiftly. Grief-stricken and naïve, she vanished into nothingness, only leaving behind a voice that had long since been taken from her…

The scene rippled again, this time not by a drop of water, but by a tear. Narcissus' cold heart palpitated, his breath catching in his throat and staying there. He lunged at the distorted vision, reminiscent of how Echo had before her untimely demise.

"I did not- it was not me! It was not me! _You ill-starred lover!_ I'm not at fault- you- _you shouldn't have loved me!"_

Nemesis, who the hunter had forgotten, hoisted him from the water he so frantically sought to capture and keep in his grasp. The reaffirmation of her touch paralyzed him. He tried to move even just one small part of his body but finds that even his eyes were completely immobilized.

Wordlessly, the goddess departed. When she left, vines and stalks grew around him. They clung to his skin and leeched off his body, wholly ignoring whatever protest he would have given if he had the voice to object.

As Narcissus slowly succumbed to the cold embrace of Thanatos, he could have sworn he heard a small, distinct voice echo his last thoughts for him.

_"Gods, what a miserable fool! What a fool I am!"_


End file.
